GIGABYTE Z790 Aorus Xtreme Motherboard Review: Flagship Z790 With Impressive VRM Thermals
by Gavin Bonshor on September 5, 2023 9:00 AM ESTBoard Features
The GIGABYTE Z790 Aorus Xtreme is a premium flagship E-ATX motherboard, which sits at the top of GIGABYTE's LGA1700 motherboard stack. GIGABYTE's Aorus brand typically caters to gamers and enthusiasts, but the Z790 Xtreme leans more towards the enthusiast scale in terms of features. Some of these features include one full-length PCIe 5.0 x16 slot and two full-length PCIe 3.0 slots that can operate at x4/x1.
As expected on a premium motherboard, GIGABYTE includes a large array of PCIe M.2 storage capabilities, including one PCIe 5.0 x4 M.2 slot, three PCIe 4.0 x4 M.2 slots, and one PCIe 4.0 x4/SATA M.2 slot. For conventional drives, four SATA ports support RAID 0, 1, 5, and 10 arrays. In the top right-hand corner of the board are four memory slots capable of supporting up to DDR5-8000 (1DPC) and a total combined capacity of up to 192 GB.
Cooling support consists of ten 4-pin headers, one designated for a CPU fan, one for a water pump, four hybrid chassis and water pump 4-pin headers, and four for chassis fans.
| GIGABYTE Z790 Aorus Xtreme Motherboard | |||
| Warranty Period | 3 Years | ||
| Product Page | Link | ||
| Price (MSRP/Amazon) | $799 (MSRP) | ||
| Size | E-ATX | ||
| CPU Interface | LGA1700 | ||
| Chipset | Intel Z790 | ||
| Memory Slots (DDR4) | Four DDR5 Supporting 192 GB Dual-Channel Up to DDR5-8000 OC (1R+1DPC) |
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| Video Outputs | 2 x Thunderbolt 4 (Type-C) | ||
| Network Connectivity | 1 x Marvell AQtion AQC107 10 GbE 1 x Intel I225-V 2.5 GbE Killer AX1690 Wi-Fi 6E |
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| Onboard Audio | Realtek ALC4082 ESS ES9280AC DAC 2 x ESS ES9080 Chips |
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| PCIe Slots for Graphics (from CPU) | 1 x PCIe 5.0 x16 (x16 or x8) | ||
| PCIe Slots for Other (from PCH) | 1 x PCIe 3.0 x4 1 x PCIe 3.0 x1 |
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| Onboard SATA | Four, RAID 0/1/5/10 | ||
| Onboard M.2 | 1 x PCIe 5.0 x4 3 x PCIe 4.0 x4 1 x PCIe 4.0 x4/SATA |
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| Onboard U.2 | N/A | ||
| Thunderbolt 4 (40 Gbps) | 2 x Type-C | ||
| USB 3.2 (20 Gbps) | 1 x USB Type-C (Front panel) | ||
| USB 3.2 (10 Gbps) | 10 x USB Type-A (Rear panel) | ||
| USB 3.2 (5 Gbps) | 4 x USB Type-A (Two headers) | ||
| USB 2.0 | 4 x USB Type-A (Two headers) | ||
| Power Connectors | 1 x 24-pin Motherboard 2 x 8-pin CPU |
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| Fan Headers | 1 x 4-pin CPU 1 x 4-pin Water pump 4 x 4-pin Chassis/Water pump 4 x 4-pin Chassis |
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| IO Panel | 2 x Antenna Ports (Killer) 2 x Thunderbolt 4 Type-C 10 x USB 3.2 G2 Type-A 1 x RJ45 (Marvell) 1 x RJ45 (Intel) 2 x 3.5 mm Audio jacks (ESS) 1 x S/PDIF Optical output (ESS) |
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Focusing on connectivity, the Z790 Aorus Xtreme has various inputs and outputs on the rear panel. This includes two Thunderbolt 4 Type-C ports, which double up as DisplayPorts, and ten USB 3.2 G2 Type-A ports. Users can utilize a further USB 3.2 G2x2 Type-C port, four USB 3.2 G2 Type-A ports, and four USB 3.2 G1 Type-A ports through internal headers around the motherboard's edges. Also featured on the rear panel are two 3.5 mm audio jacks and an S/PDIF optical output powered by a Realtel ALC4082 HD audio codec and three ESS Sabre DAC chips.
The GIGABYTE Z790 Aorus Xtreme also has a premium networking array, which is spearheaded by a Marvell AQtion AQC107 10 GbE controller, with a second RJ45 port powered by an Intel I225-V 2.5 GbE controller. The board also has wireless capabilities through a Killer AX1690 Wi-Fi 6E CNVi, which supports BT 5.3 devices.
Test Bed
With some of the nuances with Intel's Raptor Lake processors, including the use of P and E-cores, our policy is to see if the system gives an automatic option to increase the power limits of the processor. If it does, we select the liquid cooling option. If it does not, we do not change the defaults.
| Test Setup | |||
| Processor | Intel Core i9-13900K, 125 W, $589 8P + 16E Cores, 24 Threads 3.0 GHz (5.8 GHz P-Core Turbo) |
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| Motherboard | GIGABYTE Z790 Aorus Xtreme (BIOS F4) | ||
| Cooling | EKWB EK-AIO Elite 360 D-RGB 360mm | ||
| Power Supply | Corsair HX850 80Plus Platinum 850 W | ||
| Memory | Corsair Dominator Platinum RGB DDR5-6000 CL30 (2 x 16 GB) | ||
| Video Card | AMD Radeon RX 6950 XT, 31.0.12019 | ||
| Hard Drive | SK Hynix Platinum P41 2TB PCIe 4.0 | ||
| Case | Open Benchtable OBT V2 | ||
| Operating System | Windows 11 22H2 | ||
We must also thank the following:
| Hardware Providers for CPU and Motherboard Reviews | |||
| Sapphire RX 460 Nitro | MSI GTX 1080 Gaming X OC | Crucial MX200 + MX500 SSDs |
Corsair AX860i + AX1200i PSUs |
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| G.Skill RipjawsV, SniperX, FlareX |
Crucial Ballistix DDR4 |
Silverstone Coolers |
Noctua Coolers |
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22 Comments
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duffie - Tuesday, November 21, 2023 - link
Just like most of the articles.PeachNCream - Tuesday, September 5, 2023 - link
At that price, I'm sure there will be several morons that will be proud to display their ignorance by purchasing one.timecop1818 - Wednesday, September 6, 2023 - link
Stopped caring about Gigabyte when they start to include the retarded "Killer" wifi. They can fuck off together with Dell and whoever else sells that shite.Zoolook - Wednesday, September 6, 2023 - link
Who uses Wifi on a desktop with 10Gb, other as an emergency, though I'm with you on the "Killer" wifi feelings in general.Aspernari - Saturday, September 9, 2023 - link
Yeah. Intel Wireless is known to be crap... Wait, no...Killer has been owned by Intel for a few years now.
PeachNCream - Monday, September 11, 2023 - link
The wireless adapters that Killer NICs ultimately use are typically bog standard Intel hardware which is reliable and generally uses decent drivers. That was absolutely not the case before the Intel acquisition, but as you rightfully point out, that isn't a factor.What IS a factor now is the markup for Killer software which is pitched as making your pings lower by giving game packets priority when deciding which to send first. That impacts only the outbound packet traffic and only until it reaches an apathetic home router or your first ISP router where no one gives any priority. So of the potentially hundreds or thousands of miles of cable and dozens of pieces of routing equipment between your PC and a destination, you impact the first 30m or less and only on the outbound side since return trip packets arrive in the order in which they arrive regardless of what a local network adapter might articulate as important. That's the trouble with Killer NICs. There is no actual benefit and no good reason for the branding to continue to exist. At best, its harmless and at worst, the added software layer that processes and pointlessly allocates priority to game traffic is a liability in terms of CPU utilization and added code complexity.
Don't buy into the Ian Cutress baloney. He had a published friendship with ages old Killer personnel and abused his position at Anandtech to boost their products back in 2016. They are not and have never been measurably beneficial to the end user even under Intel's care as they are now.
timecop1818 - Wednesday, September 6, 2023 - link
> As it stands, this is one of the most high-end integrated audio solutions we've seen on a motherboardHmm no mention that ALC4082 is one of those garbage USB audio solutions. I had no idea that was a thing until getting my Asus Z690 mini itx board and finding out that this stuff is indeed trash.
Threska - Wednesday, September 6, 2023 - link
Well it's good enough for beeps and boops, while the real audiophiles are running an external solution via a fiber connection for the purest "0" and "1"'s one can buy.hansmuff - Wednesday, September 6, 2023 - link
That's a very niche audience wanting to have this board, is it not? All that I/O could make for a decent workstation, but then the PCI-E is all messed up just to have those TB connectors. On a workstation I'd want a PCI-E card with 4 or so NVMe SSDs on it and the appropriate throughput.I just find it strange to limit the PCI-E bus for the sake of having all those onboard things. PCI-E lets the user pick what they need and then put it on the bus. All that onboard is great with a real workstation chipset that has endless lanes coming from the CPU, but this....?!??!
Aspernari - Saturday, September 9, 2023 - link
Place the blame on Intel for killing HEDT, and pretty harshly constraining CPU PCIe lanes on desktop/consumer CPUs. Your complaint about onboard components is somewhat moot when there's only a total of 20 CPU lanes to start with, and 16 of those are probably going to a GPU, 4 to an NVMe device, probably through a switch.